Where the Wild Things Are: Five Oaks in 5 Minutes

What is it that happens when you stand in close proximity to a large tree? There is a calming effect not unlike that near a large body of water. They say that near water one is exposed to high concentrations of negative ions. Does the effect of big trees possess a similar chemical explanation? The great oaks of Olompali in Northern Marin County convey a sense of timeless perseverance. They stretch southward in a slow-motion photo tropic journey that is almost geologic in scale. The will to live is tactile and contagious. There is an energy present within all lifeforms that is palpable and in a tree that energy is not just spiritual, it's restorative.

A day among trees. After the rain all was quiet and Olompali was empty. This was the site of one of the largest settlements of Coastal Miwok Indians in California,  and one can sense that it was for the native peoples here a sacred place. Beneath these oaks there is a land that sings. It is not hard to understand why the native Americans did not understand the concept of secular and non-secular life. Their lives were enmeshed with the land and the land was alive with God, or what they called the Great Mystery.

A tree is a great mystery. It is so easy to take for granted such a ubiquitous life form but then you come across one of them as striking as the tree above and you realize they are as unique and alive as any human being. Bound to a single location for the duration of what is often a very long life, a tree is like a king of a very small world. Over the course of its lifespan, many thousands of insects and hundreds of birds will find shelter and sustenance within its bark and among its branches. Most trees will never provide shelter for a man, or respite for an imaginative child. But all trees will do so for a vast variety of other lifeforms.

It may be difficult to see, but someone has nailed a small birdhouse to the trunk of this oak - a quaint idea that seems almost silly. The entire tree is home for birds. The birdhouse is of course built of wood, which required the sacrifice of one of the oak's cousins. But still, it is a noble gesture to build a house for birds. It's comforting to imagine an animal living under a roof, like Toad or Badger in Wind and the Willows. A birdhouse is one of the many ways in which we force a tree to be useful. Yet how often do we use them as-is? When was the last time you stood beneath a tree and wondered at it because it was a tree? When was the last time you looked into such branches as these and compared them to your own inner workings? One cannot help but think of capillaries, arteries, veins.

Every tree is worthy of praise and contemplation. But we are drawn to the great ones, the ones that seem to exceed even their own outlandish forms. They seem impossible - a delicate balance of curves and weight and geometry that defies gravity and explanation. Maybe trees are beautiful because they don't require explanation. In the absence of dinosaurs they are the world's great living wonders and it is only because they are immobile that they don't transcend such mythical creatures in the imaginations of the young. Picture if you will, as Tolkien imagined, a sentient, mobile tree society. Such asymmetrical, irregular-shaped arboropods would be terrifying, as the enraged Ents were to the Orcs who decimated Fanghorn Forest. Humans would indeed have something to fear from a suddenly awakened populace of trees.

A tree however only appears menacing, and we humans are often fooled by appearances. What we see in a tree, actually, is only half the story. For, an equally vital portion of its 'body' lies invisible beneath the ground. This is something we do not see. Its root system is roughly equivalent in mass and depth to its visible features. Though its crown and branches stretch up toward the life-giving sun, an upside-down copy of itself thrives with equal necessity in the dark recesses of the mineral rich earth, sucking moisture from the soil and probing ever deeper for that precious resource that binds all living things - water.

An old stone boundary wall, laid by hand alongside this gnarled oak which served, as many old trees have before it, as a survey marker. The moss, which is growing on the tree's north side, is to the tree as the barnacle is to the whale - an opportunistic freeloader that in this case adds dignity to the old oak. The lichen-covered stones and the faint line of barbed wire remind us that it was man who divided the land into arbitrary parcels for the purpose of his commerce, in arrogant disregard to the will of nature; which of course will reclaim it for its own purposes. Trees are, perhaps, the last of the truly wild things living among us. And how lucky we are to have them here, creating oxygen for us, sucking out our carbon dioxide, giving us shade and pieces of themselves to build our homes. If you can read this, thank a tree.

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The Wooden Whale

The incongruous prop. A 14' wooden ladder lying among the marsh grasses, a mile from the road and a mere 100 yards from Kehoe beach on the Point Reyes National Seashore. At a fixed length and weighing about 100 pounds, it is an awkward, unwieldy thing. It was likely discarded in favor of a lighter, more portable aluminum model. It's former owner found it easier to throw it into the sea. It was not the tool of a painter, as it bears no staining or any sign that it was employed as a means to apply colored pigments in hard to reach places. No right tradesman would carry such a dinosaur as this, as it was virtually unportable. 

However it got to this secluded location, this practically antique ladder may have found it's truest and most honorable calling. To serve as an object of utility, to be well-made and useful are noble virtues. But to rise above such high functions to become an object of aesthetic beauty is to achieve a certain immortality. How many of its fellows, manufactured by the thousands in some poorly lit and virtually soulless factory, will ever transcend their natures and design to live forever as an artistic expression and a metaphor? 

The ladder's hard right angles and rigid forms, crafted by the hard hands of man, lie in sharp contrast to the irregular and curving form of nature as seen in this tidal marsh. The flexible brown grasses, the soft, reticulated clouds of condensed water, the rolling hills, the corpse of the ancient cypress - disembodied and covered in celadon lichen. The irony of the wooden ladder, propped up as it is by the mammoth trunk of an old growth tree cannot be ignored either. After all, the ladder was mass produced in order to serve the construction industry, home builders and home service providers - the greatest threat to trees and forests than all the world's asteroids and ice ages combined.

And there, framed between two rungs of this now dead tool of man, a prehistoric eye. Perhaps the ghost of a giant sauropod. Perhaps the wooden effigy of a beached sperm whale.  It faces east, away from the sea, and before the gathering clouds. Maybe it's telling us something. Maybe we should listen. In the end, all the ladders will be gone, and all the walls they were designed to lean against will crumble, and all the men who place them there will have returned back to the dust from whence they came.

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To Be an Oak

Coastal Live Oak, Lucas Valley, CA

In the days of  wooden sailing vessels a tree such as this might serve as a single bracing knee for a ship of the line. English Oaks were decimated for this purpose. The British Empire owed its success to its navies and its navies owed theirs to its ships, and the men who sailed them. The natural strength of the oak was part of the secret behind the might of the English ships and thus not an insignificant component of the might of history's greatest naval power. Thousands of oak trees died for the sins of colonialism.

But this is not an English Oak, it's a Coastal Live Oak living on a hillside in what was once a cow pasture in Northern California. It's primary use these days is to provide romantic atmosphere in the living rooms of Marin County in the form of firewood. There is nothing quite like an oak fire. The wood burns well and fills a home with a pleasant woodsy smell. Oak is also the preferred fuel of the pizza oven. How lovely for such a noble life form as this, to die for our humble palates and palaces.

To me, there is no living thing as stunning or as wonderful as a great oak. I am ever fascinated by their shapes. I've written about them before. In my novel Serpent Box an ancient oak tree plays a prominent role. When I look at an oak tree such as this, I do not see them as static objects. I see them in motion. I see them as vital, living things reaching for the sky. I see them in the midst of a dance. Swaying, turning, undulating. Oak trees are erratic, electric, fractal, chaotic, frozen. Or are they?

I remember seeing once a series of time-lapse photographs taken of a sea bed covered in starfish. Seen in real time, the scene was tranquil and static. Starfish move at a rate of speed roughly equivalent to that of a snail. But sped up, the scene was quite different. When several hours were compressed into a minute or two, the ocean floor looked like a freeway interchange. Starfish, zipping by in all directions, appeared as fast as automobiles, complete with traffic jams and pile-ups. Time *is* another dimension, and I imagine oak trees as simply stuck in ours. But if we could watch them over the span of a hundred years what we saw might resemble an upside-down lightning strike.

Same tree, different angle. The setting sun is obscured by one of the upper branches and the tree is in silhouette. Look closely, but relax your gaze so that it becomes slightly blurred. It might be some neural ganglia, or a piece of coral, or the spidery webs of frost on the window glass. The patterns of nature repeat at various scales and in a wide variety of locations. What an amazing thing it is - to be alive.

If you stand under an oak tree and shut your eyes you can hear it growing. If you hold your hand to its trunk you can feel it breathing, like the hide of some great, prehistoric beast. Trees are my favorite life forms, and oaks my favorite among trees. How beautiful it would be, to be an oak tree that is allowed to live out its natural life on a hill such as this. How many thousands of gallons of rain will it drink? How many sails full of wind will it catch? How many birds will perch in its branches in a hundred years? How many leaves will it grow and shed? And how many human beings will stand beneath it, hold their palms against its trunk and give it credence? Not many of those.

I would rather be an oak tree than a man. It is a worthier existence. And though it does not give very much back to the earth, it springs from the earth and is thus more a part of this world than I.

3 Photographs, 1 Day

It began in the laundromat, a place I had forgotten. A place whose magic I had forgotten. It had been almost 20 years since I did this. The ritual of quarters and $2 boxes of soap and quiet waiting amidst the calming hums. It takes an hour and fifteen minutes to wash, dry and fold a large load of laundry; which is something you take for granted when the machines are within the confines of your own private living space. Here you sit with strangers. Old women and young men. Polite smiles and anxious lurking. A wheeled basket of wet clothes, on deck for the next open dryer. Feeding fivers into the change machine. Staring out the foggy windows. Reading yesterday's newspaper. Reading a book. Spending a valuable chunk of your Saturday afternoon watching the suds swirl, watching your socks and your underwear spin. There is something very quiet, very meditative about laundromats. They are places of renewal and reflection. Here you must stop and wait for the water to do what water does - wash away the sins of your daily living.

From one cathedral to another. This one just up the hill. By this time it had really begun to rain. The woman came in and put down her purse and she dropped to her knees to pray. 22 years in San Francisco and this was the first time I had ever set foot inside Grace Cathedral. The light was spectacular, as it is meant to be in such places. It was even better in the gray of the rain. All the candles seemed to be lit, there was not an unlit candle in the church. This was a day for prayers. Much like the laundromat, this was a place I could stay in for hours. No sound other than murmurs and gentle footfalls. It's the quietness that I seek. Liberation from cell phones and televisions, anything with a screen. Yes, that's what it is about these two places, there are no screens, no screaming electrons. I am drawn to places where I cannot be reached or monitored or reminded how big the world is. I want to go where it is small.

Did they serve him well? That's what I wanted to know. While they lasted, did they keep his feet comfortable and sufficiently warm? From some unknown Chinese province, a long journey in the container of a ship, a short stint in a discount store and then a fortnight at the end of the legs of a man. Did they just suddenly stop working? I want to imagine that he stopped right here, on this corner, and that he just stepped out onto the sidewalk in his stocking feet and said "Goodbye friends, may you serve another less fortunate than I."And he took the laces with him because they were still good. He was that kind of man. And then he walked right down the street you see here, never looking back, maybe even whistling as he went. I have an inexplicable fascination with abandoned shoes.